Wealthsimple Technologies

Senior Software Developer, Book of Record (Leverage)

Wealthsimple Technologies1 weeks ago
Location

Remote (Canada)

Workplace

Remote

Type

Full Time

Salary

CAD 152,000 – 189,000

Level

Senior

Role

Backend Engineer

Posted

Jul 13, 2026

Full TimeRemoteSenior

The role

Summary

Senior Software Developer role on Wealthsimple's Leverage team within Book of Record, responsible for designing and building backend systems that power margin, lending, and buying power calculations for over 4 million Canadian clients. This is a backend-heavy, consequential fintech engineering position requiring 5+ years of professional software engineering experience with strong expertise in building critical, low-latency production systems and deep system design judgment.

What you'll do

Design and Build Backend Services for Financial Systems: Design, develop, and maintain backend services that power balances, margin calculations, buying power determination, collateral assessment, and lending products. These systems form the core ledger-of-truth infrastructure that Wealthsimple clients and internal teams depend on for accurate financial transactions and operations.
End-to-End Ownership and Production Operations: Own meaningful technical scope from architectural design through to deployment and reliable production operation. Take full responsibility for system reliability, performance optimization, and incident response during critical periods such as market open and peak trading volumes.
Solve High-Impact Reliability and Performance Challenges: Address complex technical problems around real-time correctness, sub-second latency requirements, and high availability constraints. Architect solutions that maintain system dependability under market stress and ensure financial accuracy across billions of transactions.
Drive Architectural Evolution: Contribute to evolving the Leverage platform architecture as the team scales new lending products and user volume. Work within the event-driven, JVM-based microservices stack built on Kafka to implement scalable, resilient solutions for emerging financial products and business requirements.
Establish Quality and Operational Excellence Standards: Raise engineering standards across the team through thoughtful system design, rigorous code review practices, and demonstrated ownership of production systems. Establish patterns for testing, observability, and operational best practices that scale across the Leverage team.
Mentor and Develop Engineering Team: Invest in growing junior and mid-level engineers through collaborative pairing sessions, detailed code reviews, and real-time technical feedback. Share domain knowledge about financial systems, trading mechanics, and lending products while learning from teammates' perspectives and expertise.
Leverage AI-Assisted Development Tools: Adopt and refine AI-assisted development tools to accelerate development velocity while maintaining code quality and correctness standards. Help shape team practices for rigorous, excellent AI-assisted engineering that complements rather than replaces critical thinking in financial systems.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner closely with Product, Design, and neighboring engineering teams to translate complex financial requirements into clear technical specifications and user-friendly experiences. Communicate technical constraints, trade-offs, and opportunities to inform business decisions around lending products and financial features.

What we look for

Technical

Kotlin Backend DevelopmentStrong proficiency in Kotlin for building production backend services. Experience with Spring Boot or similar frameworks for building microservices. Comfortable with JVM performance characteristics, garbage collection, and optimization for latency-sensitive applications.
Apache Kafka and Event StreamingWorking knowledge of Apache Kafka for building event-driven systems, message routing, and real-time data processing. Understanding of Kafka topics, partitioning, consumer groups, and ensuring message ordering and exactly-once semantics where required.
GraphQL and API DesignExperience designing and implementing GraphQL APIs for backend services. Understanding of schema design, federation patterns (Apollo Federation preferred), and optimizing query performance. Exposure to API design best practices for scalability and developer experience.
Database Design and OptimizationExpertise with relational databases (PostgreSQL preferred) and understanding of schema design, indexing strategies, and query optimization. Experience with eventual consistency patterns, transaction handling, and database performance under high load.
Distributed Systems DesignDeep understanding of distributed systems concepts including consistency models, replication, partitioning, and failure modes. Ability to reason about trade-offs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance (CAP theorem) and apply these principles to financial systems.
System Reliability and ObservabilityProficiency with observability tools (monitoring, logging, distributed tracing) and SRE practices. Experience defining SLOs/SLIs, implementing comprehensive logging and metrics, and building robust alerting strategies for production systems.
Testing and Code QualityStrong software quality habits including unit testing, integration testing, and test-driven development. Experience with mutation testing, property-based testing, and establishing code coverage standards. Ability to write maintainable, well-documented code that facilitates code review effectiveness.
Container Orchestration (Nice to Have)Familiarity with Kubernetes for container orchestration and deployment. Understanding of pods, services, deployments, and operational patterns for running distributed systems in Kubernetes environments.
AI-Assisted Development ToolsProficiency and enthusiasm for working with AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, or similar). Demonstrated ability to use AI assistants effectively while maintaining code quality standards and critical thinking about correctness and architecture.

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Related FieldPreferred bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Mathematics, or related field. Equivalent professional software engineering experience may substitute for formal education.
Continuous Learning in Financial SystemsDemonstrated commitment to continuous learning about financial markets, trading mechanics, and lending products. Self-directed learning through courses, documentation, or domain expertise development is valued.

Experience

5+ Years Professional Software EngineeringMinimum five years of professional software engineering experience with a demonstrated track record of building and operating critical production systems that are depended upon by consumers or businesses. Experience should include leading technical decisions on systems where correctness and reliability are non-negotiable.
Backend Systems Design and Production OwnershipStrong background in backend software architecture with proven ability to design systems for low-latency, high-availability requirements. Deep experience taking production ownership seriously, including incident response, debugging complex distributed system issues, and maintaining calm under pressure during production incidents.
Work in Modern JVM or Comparable StackProfessional experience working in Kotlin, Java, Scala, or other JVM languages with production systems. Experience with event-driven architecture, stream processing platforms (Kafka, Flink), and distributed systems. Exact stack match not required but depth in comparable technology stacks is essential.
Low-Latency and High-Availability SystemsHands-on experience designing and building services that operate under low-latency constraints (sub-second to millisecond response times) and require high availability guarantees. Familiarity with performance optimization, monitoring, and operational patterns for demanding production environments.
Fintech or Regulated Domain Experience (Preferred)Prior experience working in fintech, banking, trading, or other regulated, high-stakes domains where system correctness directly impacts business outcomes. Ideally at a fast-moving, high-growth company where you've navigated scaling challenges and regulatory considerations.
Ledger and Financial Correctness Problems (Nice to Have)Specific experience working on ledger systems, reconciliation processes, or financial-correctness problems. Familiarity with double-entry bookkeeping, financial transaction integrity, or similar domain-specific challenges that require absolute correctness.
Event-Driven Architecture Expertise (Nice to Have)Direct experience designing and implementing event-driven architectures using Kafka, Apache Flink, or similar stream processing technologies. Understanding of event sourcing, CQRS patterns, and maintaining consistency in distributed systems.

Skills

Required skills

Backend System ArchitectureAbility to design scalable, reliable backend systems with sound judgment about trade-offs between consistency, availability, latency, and maintainability. Deep understanding of microservices architecture, API design patterns, and deployment strategies.
Production System OwnershipDemonstrated accountability for systems running in production with genuine financial or business impact. Ability to troubleshoot complex issues, make rapid decisions under pressure, and maintain composed, methodical approaches to incident response.
Software Quality and TestingStrong commitment to writing well-tested, maintainable code with comprehensive test coverage. Ability to perform effective code reviews that improve both code quality and team capabilities. Understanding of testing strategies from unit tests through end-to-end integration tests.
Clear Technical CommunicationAbility to communicate technical concepts clearly with both engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders. Skill in sharing context early, asking clarifying questions proactively, and maintaining transparency about technical constraints and trade-offs.
Domain Curiosity and Financial Systems UnderstandingGenuine curiosity about the business context behind systems, not just implementation details. Desire to understand financial reality, client outcomes, and why business rules exist. Willingness to learn about margin, leverage, collateral, and lending mechanics.
Collaborative Engineering MindsetCollaborative approach to engineering with generosity in sharing knowledge and investing in team development. Comfortable working closely with Product and Design teams to translate requirements into technical solutions and iterate based on feedback.

Nice to have

Fintech ExperiencePrior experience working at fintech companies, banks, trading platforms, or other regulated financial institutions. Familiarity with regulatory compliance, financial audit requirements, and the unique constraints of financial software.
Event-Driven Architecture ImplementationHands-on experience implementing event-driven systems with Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, or similar stream processing platforms. Understanding of event sourcing, CQRS patterns, and maintaining consistency across distributed event-driven architectures.
Kubernetes OperationsExperience deploying and operating systems in Kubernetes environments. Understanding of Kubernetes abstractions, deployment strategies, and operational best practices for microservices at scale.
Apollo Federation GraphQLSpecific experience with Apollo Federation for building federated GraphQL schemas across multiple backend services. Understanding of gateway patterns and schema composition for distributed GraphQL systems.
Trading and Lending Domain KnowledgeDomain knowledge of margin trading, portfolio lines of credit, lending products, options, or futures. Understanding of how buying power calculations work, collateral requirements, and risk management in trading and lending contexts.
AI-Assisted Development LeadershipEnthusiasm and demonstrated experience using AI coding assistants. Ability to mentor others on effective AI-assisted development practices and help establish team standards for using AI tools rigorously and responsibly.

Compensation & benefits

Salary

CAD 152,000 – 189,000 (annual)

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Wealthsimple Technologies

Wealthsimple Technologies

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Wealthsimple Technologies is a Canadian financial technology company that provides automated investing and personal finance management solutions to consumers. The company offers a range of digital wealth management products, including robo-advisor investment accounts, tax-free savings accounts, and financial planning tools designed to make investing accessible and affordable for everyday people. Wealthsimple operates in the fintech and wealth management industry, serving millions of users across multiple countries with a mission to democratize access to financial services.

Toronto, CanadaFounded 2014wealthsimple.com/en-ca

Tech Stack

Languages
KotlinJavaSQL
Frameworks
Spring BootGraphQLApollo Federation
Databases
PostgreSQLRedis
Tools
Apache KafkaDockerKubernetesGitHub Copilot or ClaudeMonitoring and Observability Tools
Other
Event-Driven Architecture PatternsLedger and Financial Transaction SystemsDistributed Systems and Consensus
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